Turnout: 72.10%
About this election
Finland held parliamentary elections on 14 April 2019 in an unusually fragmented contest — the first in which no party reached 20% of the vote. The Social Democrats (SDP) narrowly won with 17.73% and 40 seats, edging the national-conservative Finns Party, which surged to 17.48% and 39 seats. The National Coalition Party followed on 17.00% and 38 seats, while the Centre Party slumped to 13.76% and 31 seats — its worst result in over a century. The Greens (20 seats), the Left Alliance (16), the Swedish People's Party (9) and the Christian Democrats (5) shared the remainder. Turnout was 72.8%.
The vote followed the collapse of Juha Sipilä's Centre-led government, which resigned shortly before the election after its flagship health-and-social-care reform failed in parliament. Years of austerity had eroded support for the governing parties, and the Centre Party in particular paid a heavy price, setting up a contest in which the left and the populist right both advanced.
The 200-seat Eduskunta is elected by open-list proportional representation (d'Hondt) across 13 districts, with no statutory threshold and one seat for Åland. Voters choose an individual candidate whose vote also supports the party list. Because seats are allocated district by district, a party's seat total can diverge slightly from its national vote share — which is how the SDP and the Finns Party finished almost level in votes but a seat apart.
The contest was effectively a three-way race between the SDP, the Finns Party and the National Coalition Party, with the once-dominant Centre Party falling back sharply. The Greens and the Left Alliance, both with a strong urban and younger base, made gains, while the Swedish People's Party and the Christian Democrats held steady.
Climate change rose to the top of the agenda, alongside the future of the welfare state and collective bargaining. Immigration also featured prominently: the Finns Party rebuilt its support — roughly doubling it during the campaign — partly on the back of a high-profile child-exploitation scandal, returning the party to the front rank after its 2017 split. The campaign was unusually heated, including incidents of harassment of candidates.
SDP leader Antti Rinne assembled a five-party centre-left coalition with the Centre Party, the Greens, the Left Alliance and the Swedish People's Party, taking office in June 2019. When Rinne resigned later that year amid a postal-strike dispute, he was succeeded as prime minister by Sanna Marin, who at 34 became one of the world's youngest serving heads of government.
The 2019 election marked both the return of the left to the premiership and the consolidation of the Finns Party as a permanent major force, while confirming the long-term fragmentation of Finnish politics into several closely matched parties. The Centre Party's historic collapse foreshadowed further turbulence to come.
In 2015 the Centre Party under Juha Sipilä had won comfortably and formed a centre-right government with the Finns Party and the National Coalition. The reversal in 2019 — with the Centre crashing and the SDP returning to first place — underlined how rapidly fortunes shift in Finland's multi-party system.
2019 was widely dubbed Finland's first climate election, with the environment topping voters' concerns and the Greens and the Left Alliance both advancing on the strength of younger, urban support. The salience of climate, set against the Finns Party's emphasis on immigration and the cost of climate measures, helped define the new cleavage in Finnish politics.
Turnout rose to 72.8%, among the higher figures in recent Finnish parliamentary elections, reflecting the unusually charged and closely fought nature of the contest.
Statistics Finland (Tilastokeskus) and the Ministry of Justice election results service — stat.fi.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.